Social Media is the way forward to grow your business, to increase sales and awareness. Whether you are a Start Up with only 1 employee or a huge Global Corporate…Social Media can reach mass audiences with little expenditure! Take a look at this amazing short video to see how Social Media has changed the way we market ourselves.
Sales Persuasion Top Tips
Persuasion is the process of getting your customers to clearly associate their most desired feelings or states to your products or services. We are traditionally taught to sell by finding out what people need when in fact selling is more about creating an emotional WANT for your products so that we in turn motivate people to buy.
For example: A person does not NEED a Mercedes, they WANT a Mercedes as they may feel it shows they have achieved success, makes them feel important or they love the luxury of the car.
Our job as sales people is to:
● Find out what our customers WANT most.
● Link it emotionally to our products and make it compelling.
● Associate NOT buying to equal pain.
E.g. “If I do not buy this Mercedes today, I will have to go back to driving my old, tired car.”
This persuasive process is something that Tony Robbins calls The Dickens Approach.
Sell What People Want and Not What People Need.
Buying is an emotional process. In most cases, we buy something that we want at that particular moment instead of sitting down and thinking whether it is something that we need. If every one of us thought rationally before we bought, there would not be so many people in deep consumer debts. This is the biggest proof of emotional purchasing.
Leverage the Pain and Pleasure of Your Customers to Sell Your Products
If you want to sell something to a customer, then you must tackle the customer’s emotion so that you can make him/her feel some kind of “want” over your products. Ask open questions that specifically create an emotional response e.g How would it make you feel to drive your brand new Mercedes Benz?”
Sell with Integrity
There is a process to get to this place, and customers want to know you have their best interests at heart or they will never buy from you. So keep the following customer thoughts in your mind:
1. “Do you have my best interests at heart?”
2. “What’s in it for me?”
3. “What does it mean for me?”
In tough economic times likes these only the most adaptable, creative and customer focused sales people survive. Fine tune your persuasive selling skills by working through these exercises:
● Write down 3 purchases you recently bought.
(Was it a need or a want that motivated you to buy? Make a note of how big your want was.)
● Think of a time when you had a strong want or and didn’t buy.
(What were the reasons for not following through? For example was there not a strong enough hurt?)
● What would you have done to sell it yourself knowing what you know now?
● Write down 10 examples of open emotional questions you could ask your customers.
● How can you use want you have just learned with your customers?
Contact us to find out how you can use these techniques in more depth.
Top 3 Reasons Why Managers Fail
So many people work hard for promotion to management everyday, they are passionate about the companies they work for, excel at their job and want to develop in their careers. So why is it that 75% of managers fail and are demoted within the first 6 months of the new role?
A good or bad manager can make or break a team. It doesn’t matter how much the company spends on developing their product and on marketing, if excellent management is not in place revenue and customers will be lost!
So what can you do? First understand what causes Managers to fail so you can fix it!
1.They were promoted for the wrong reason
Many managers are promoted for excelling at their job, sounds reasonable doesn’t it? However when we look at this in more depth it’s not always the right approach, a top sales person or a thorough accountant may not make a great manager. They may have the skills to do their job well however management competencies are very different:
Solution:
Knowing the following competencies in advance helps organisations to promote well, also enabling individuals striving for management to develop these key areas:
- Acting with integrity
- Caring for people (Emotional Intelligence)
- Demonstrating ethical behaviour
- Communicating with others
- Taking a long-term perspective
- Being open minded
- Managing responsibly outside the organisation
2.They do not develop and coach!
Coaching is a fast track route to creating high performing teams. It creates self-empowered individuals who are goal focused and highly motivated. So what stops managers from coaching? The main reasons are they haven’t been trained and many say they have never received coaching personally. By not seeing and feeling the benefits for themselves means personal development drops to the bottom of the task list. .
Solution:
Create high performing teams by training managers on cutting edge coaching techniques! A premier league football team would not be sent out on the pitch without being coached, shouldn’t the same apply to yourself and your teams?
3.They tell rather then ask!
When a team member asks their manager on how to improve their performance, the manager’s first instinct is to tell them how to do it. Although telling them what to do may be the most quickest and efficient approach, it is not always the most effective. Examples of long-term damage are over reliant team members, stifled individual development, and increased responsibility on the manager’s shoulders.
Solution:
By asking the right open and empowering questions managers can help their teams to come up with fresh innovative ideas, create self-responsible team members who find their own solutions with increased confidence.
For example:
| Disempowering Questions | Empowering Questions |
| Your sales have fallen this month | How do you feel you have performed this month? |
| Do you think you have accomplished anything? | What have you accomplished that you are most pleased with? |
| Don’t you think this will benefit the company if you achieve your target? | What would be the benefit to yourself, the customer and the company when you achieve your objectives? |
It’s a win, win, win situation, firstly the manager has more time on their hands, secondly team members feel valued and developed, finally the organisation wins by seeing results!
Work on the above and you will see the results! Feel free to contact me with any questions.
